A Narrative Review of Three Streams of Avatar Marketing with Potential, Examples, and Challenges

Purpose: Recently, there has been enthusiasm for the relatively new technology, the metaverse. One technology related to and important for the metaverse is the Avatar, which is the graphical representation of users. Avatar has been studied for many years and is beginning to be used as a marketing tool. Although we think that there are three streams of avatar marketing (i.e. Virtual Social and Game World (VSGW) Avatar Marketing; Model Avatar and Virtual Fitting Room Marketing (MAVFR) Marketing; Virtual Assistant Marketing), little research has summarized them. This absence of categorization of three types of avatar marketing results in a disorder of research findings and makes it difficult for researchers and marketers to conduct avatar marketing research and best practices. This paper aims to explore the potential, specific examples, and challenges of each of the three types of avatar marketing. Approach and Contributions: In this narrative review paper, the authors first explore the definition and brief history of each type of avatar marketing. Then, the authors explore the potential, specific examples, and challenges of each type of avatar marketing by reviewing and referencing research papers, websites, newspaper articles, and books. Related to this, this paper discusses the importance of understanding each kind of avatar marketing in the developed future virtual worlds. Originality: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review paper that covers three streams of avatar marketing that will inspire practitioners and researchers about the challenges and opportunities of the three types of avatar marketing with specific examples.